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The EU has such anti-democratic flaws and is in such danger of imploding that any proper analysis would need far more space than is available to me right now. However, because the French President Emmanuel Macron has let fly in an attempt to specifically target the USA for criticism and to humiliate Donald Trump, some facts as to the weakness of Macron and France need to be stated.

His speech attempted to both differentiate ‘Patriotism” from ‘Nationalism” and then redefine “nationalism” towards “a betrayal of patriotism” He also claimed that “By saying, ‘Our interests first’ … we erase what a nation holds dearest … its moral values” but how he came to this claim is unclear, but, as the words are often considered synonyms for each other, perhaps Macron was merely being “modern” in appropriating historical words like nationalism and trying to give them a new meaning, serving the Narrative of the day. At least he didn’t seem to follow the USA hard left and media by claiming it was identical to “white nationalism” or that it equals “white supremacism”.

Today, various political groups, especially the extremes of left and right have tried to appropriate these words for their exclusive use, but only the lazy will allow them to get away with it without being called out for it. It achieved Macron his headline, made him stand out as a man making a notable statement that fuelled critics of the USA, fed the internal US opposition to Trump in media and politics, but fell short of carving a new meaning for any supposed “Trump Doctrine” definition. In fact it has merely brought the warring parties back to the barricades and smothered the significance of the occasion. That is part the legacy of Trump and Trump hatred.

More important than all that, though, is the reality of the power relationship between the USA and Europe and this Macron grandstanding doesn’t change a thing. Macron pushing for a bigger and more powerful EU has hints of delusions of grandeur. However, it also smacks of the Macron acceptance of the dangers facing the EU entity which has been so good (and financially rewarding) for France.

From recent decades until now, France has been a close partner to Germany, the dominant EU state, running a core EU which has had all the other states as its virtual vassals/tributaries. As was shown in the lead up to the Greek financial crisis, this duumvirate of nations (dare I say “Nationalists”) got rich when the outlying states – particularly the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland Greece and Spain) gorged themselves on debts from French and German banks whilst using it to obtain goods from Germany, sending Germany to become the top exporter in the world. When the PIIGS staggered under the weight of debt, the duumvirate of France and Germany ensured that their two nations were favoured above the others in the EU. (NOT just the PIIGS. They were favoured over ALL the other nations).

To see Macron talking as if the EU was going to be the rival power to the super powers (and this more recent material about wanting to see a Brussels-led “Empire”) gives a good indication why Macron was talking up the EU as a power with its own army. Of course when none of these major EU states even comes close to its 2% of budget going to defence, an EU army without the British would seem to be pushing it.

Macron and Germany plus the whole Brussels bureaucracy are in fear right now. Fear and arrogance in a terrible combination. One could write books on the undemocratic and anti-democratic EU, the waste and corruption, the dictatorial Troika of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the IMF having such power to render minor EU states as vassals to its will. That the Troika-demanded the overthrow of the Italian and Greek governments in the PIIGS crisis is an example of their ruthlessness, but Gisela Stuart a former long-time British Labour Party MP gave a good summary about how the EU as an entity can and does work in its own interests.

Of course, Brexit was a huge warning to them that the gravy train was in danger. If countries could break away, there would be no more using Greek-like crises to replenish French and German banks by ordering vassals to help take over those bank debts. Britain was the canary in the coal mine on this. Thus the desperation to act against the V4, Visegrad nations (Hungary,Poland,Czech Republic and Slovakia) plus Italy and force them to obey. The EU and the shaky No2, France, cannot be expected to stand that.

There is too much to write about the EU to add it here. The corruption and dictatorial workings of this massive bureaucratic, undemocratic organisation deserves book after book devoted to it as previously mentioned.

All this is reaction to those dangers. It’s a dangerous game, as it could hasten the longed-for breakup of this undemocratic, authoritarian core group lording it over nations and their peoples. An “Empire”? They have a shoddy one now and it’s crumbling.

Conservatives in Australia and all people who want the Liberal Party, their choice of a “conservative” party to change the policies which are bringing it down, must face facts. Their Prime Minister Scott Morrison cannot do what he must to survive or to help the Liberal party survive what are horrendous polling numbers aided by internal sabotage. Quite the opposite is happening and he seems powerless to stop it.

Yes, we know (and can say) that he must strike out in positive, Abbott-like, terms differentiating him and his party from the Australian Labor Party. Leave the Paris climate agreement, subsidise/guarantee High Energy Low Emissions (HELE) coal-fired power, stop subsidising solar/wind etc. Yet he cannot carry out such policies and all the talking or browbeating in the world can’t make it happen.

He must rely on the rotten NSW State Liberal party controllers and string-pullers run by Michael Photios and his lobbyist mates (including now a large green Photios lobbying group, aided by environmental committees with Liberal Party national president Nick Greiner and other prominent left wing Liberals on them). It is in strong alliance with fellow traveller leftist Liberal Party factions from all over Australia. No, that is a brick wall holding firm against making the necessary changes to policy on climate, immigration and so on. They cut down a serving Prime Minister when they knifed Tony Abbott in 2015 and they would do it again if they needed to.

Why I never wanted Tony Abbott to come back into the leadership is the very reason Morrison is hamstrung now: he has to rely on the unreliable, lobbyist crew who brought down Abbott and who control NSW Liberals. NSW is the Morrison party base and, led by Photios, it got him into the leadership to thwart the conservative Dutton and he owes them.
This power group, led by lobbyists doing business with the government but also playing their part in selecting those Liberal Party candidates for public office who, as parliamentarians, will actually deal with the lobbyists if in government, act with ruthless effectiveness (aided by pathetic moral coward MPs bowing and scraping to Photios). Reinforced by dedicated, green energy-based lobbying vehicles to drain riches from the environmental groups which the government they control subsidise, they will always be a brick wall stopping such policies or, if those policies are brought in temporarily, will be their destroyers over time.

Perhaps this is why in the case of the NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, the Photios cabal have ruthlessly exercised such control. Who else would be able to keep the new MP Felicity Wilson in power, let alone have the state premier praise publicly what seems to be a person who is difficult to take seriously. Unless openly acting with the blessing of a newer, more destructive factional force, a new MP would seem to be a dangerously de-stabilising member if daring to plot the defeat of a lifetime member of their party, especially one who actually took them to government as PM for only the fourth time since the end of WWII. Plotting to defeat all opposition no matter what effect it had on the party would be bad enough even these days (and with these faction leaders), but fostering and linking to radical, hard left groups such as Getup, an overseas-funded, George Soros-aided anti-conservative political activist and astroturf group would not get much party support, one might think. Wrongly, as it turns out.

Add to that the idea that Morrison can simply announce payment for a new HELE power station. Yes, he can, as long as he can crash through that same Photios-controlled NSW opposition. Oh, and be prepared to counter the howls of rage from those pushing the Snowy 2 farce, an uneconomic mess that was just Turnbull desperately trying to do something – anything – other than get us more cheap coal-fired power. The idea of using huge energy to pump water uphill which then will provide hydro-electric power as it rushed down again is laughable and is why it has always been laughed at when proposed. The moment the government announces money or guarantees for a new HELE station, Snowy 2 is instantly uneconomic and has to be scrapped. Of course billions already spent would be wasted, a small price to pay if it actually was scrapped.

Immigration might also be a game-changer but here, too, Morrison is hamstrung and not only by the lobbyist cabal which controls the NSW party. Because Treasury sees valuable economic “growth” coming from increasing or continual immigration, that is a disincentive for Treasury to accept change when needed for other reasons, economic or otherwise. Morrison as Treasurer held out firmly against any calls for change to the immigration rate, even when the opposition Labor Party was also hinting at it (the ALP getting feedback from its old areas, once contested by liberals under Abbott, but abandoned since Abbott was overthrown). Once the ALP sees that there is no chance of an Abbott-like recontesting of these areas (when Abbott actually took seats from them) the ALP will drop off again and neglect them anew.

In the dying days of the Gillard government between the Kevin Rudd Phantom Challenge in March 2013 (after which his supporters left government in an old-fashioned Gillard-led purge), until Rudd returned as leader in June 2013, the former government ministers were in a Twilight Zone-type state, it seemed. Richard Marles, Joel Fitzgibbon, Chris Bowen and Ed Husic, in particular, appeared time and time again on TV opinion shows, cheerful, quite matter-of-fact about the doom about to hit when the election came and seemingly quite unfazed by it all, “almost as if glad that the end had come”

Going by the now-open dissent against Morrison/ nostalgia for Turnbull (who they actually helped to overthrow Abbott), the Photios-allied forces are seemingly preparing for federal opposition, ready to control completely the rump Liberal party, which would remain after that predicted wipe out and with all the promising, potential leaders also defeated and, to them, hopefully finished. A new generation of the best of the conservative newcomers, the Angus Taylor types, Andrew Hastie etc. Publicly allied with the Malcolm Turnbull (& family) public dissing of the current government, aided and abetted by the usual suspects (ABC, Fairfax, social media), the attack on party conservatives continues openly.

The ridiculous Q&A appearance by Turnbull where his bleating about being replaced after doing a Gorton and falling on his sword was met with huge sympathy from the captive “progressive” audience and praised by his media toadies, showed the divide in Australian politics. Backed up publicly by fellow faction members (and the favoured minister Christopher Pyne), the moves were there for all to see, Staying in government is secondary – if that – to protecting the (factional) furniture.

A bit of a doomsday scenario, to be sure, but the end game is here. Alex Turnbull going public is just being the foghorn to warn of the change which is coming. Alex Turnbull made investments in the Infigen Energy company (a loss-making renewables company) and the mandated renewable energy targets brought in by his father Malcolm certainly backed up his personal views. By chance it also improved the financial fortunes of Infigen Energy. How could they possibly put the pieces back together again?

You only have to be a student of history to see what happened when Menzies created the Liberal Party out of the old United Australia Party which had come to its end by 1943, said to be fatally stricken.

Malcolm Turnbull always was a celebrity fraud. An expressed youthful idea that his being the PM was everything and that the actual political “party” was irrelevant for him says everything about his path through politics. And, I think, sums up his inevitable political legacy: a fraud from start to finish.

The way he went out of office seems typical of the man and many different psychological types which might relate to his underlying persona seem to present themselves for possible correlation to his actions. The viciousness with which he spat the dummy is indicative of the person he is and probably always was, his anger, aggression, threats of law suits in his early career, all could correspond with his actions after his demise.

Perhaps a repeat of his (to him) terribly depressing childhood with a single parent father bringing him up in luxury in a large eastern suburbs home, education at the prestigious Sydney Grammar, university law degree and a life of relative luxury from start to finish. The loss of a mother early in life is a huge blow to children, especially if she deserted the child, but not many have the “compensations” enjoyed by the young Malcolm. The rest of the Turnbull narrative is that he was a keen lawyer, the famous Spycatcher case where he took on the British Government, the time as the Kerry Packer representative, the massive wealth earned when he was part of the Australian internet email pioneer Ozemail. Touted as a Lion of Business and a merchant banker, this investor and deal-maker rightfully basked as a self-made multi-millionaire, associate of the rich and wealthy in politics and business. He deserves that to be recognised.

However, the real political history of Turnbull will be repeated now and that, too, deserves to be recognised. How he got into politics by branch-stacking and bringing hundreds of new members/mates in (as they famously do in the ALP – but Liberal factions do now also). Another Turnbull trait – repeated with Brendan Nelson and who knows how many others – was evident here also: abusive verbal exchanges with the man he replaced Peter King.

Cutting down Brendan Nelson as leader of the Liberal Party after the defeat of the Howard government, he was a serial leaker and underminer of Nelson until he became leader in his place. Pushing the party too far in his insistence on electoral suicide by going for the disastrous carbon tax scheme of the Labor party, he was overthrown himself and Tony Abbott became leader. Of course the undermining started again and remained constant even as Abbott cut down and destroyed the Labor leader Kevin Rudd and later Julia Gillard. Even the landslide victory gained by Abbott in 2013 didn’t stop the Turnbull sabotage in the slightest, aided at that time by others also influenced by the factions he cultivated and to which he bowed low.

Once he gained the leadership again, he did it “his way”. Super confident, he did nothing but undertake (& tried to take credit for) policies created by the Abbott team and when the many false starts (”everything is on the table” until it wasn’t at all, state taxes/no state taxes) meant that “do nothing” status became public, the open antagonism against Tony Abbott began again. A smear a few months after he took over claimed that lack of action on tax reform was because the Abbott team “had left us with nothing” done in preparation, although many voices showed clearly that, literally “tens of thousands of hours” had been prepared by the Abbott government and that a white paper was ready for presentation for a week after the overthrow

Thanks to the large majority in parliament inherited from the work by Tony Abbott, Turnbull approached the elections of 2016 super-confidently. His true policy inclinations (generally green, renewable energy, gay marriage, the ABC-set and, always, opposition to any hard-conservative policies on energy, boats or immigration) were kept in check due to the promises he had to make to the National Party and others to retain the Abbott policies on immigration and energy. He approached the forthcoming elections with what seemed to be his plan to assert control.

Calling a double dissolution on the defeated Abbott policy of a re-creation of the Australian Building and Construction Commission to rein in illegal union industrial disruption, once the election was called he never relied upon it. Creating a group and a logo entitled the “Turnbull Coalition Team”, with no “Liberal Party” wording in sight, his campaigning was lethargic, to say the least. Against all advice it was a 2 month campaign, one of the longest ever, and he worked half a day at a time, if that, breaking for lunch and calling it a day after that.

He studiously and deliberately never campaigned on the winning stopping boats, immigration or cheaper energy policies which Abbott had used to destroy the opposition. They were forgotten completely. He never even campaigned on the cause for which the election was called, the ABCC until, at the last, when the forthcoming disaster was communicated to him.

And so it came about that the huge majority was reduced to only one seat and then Turnbull was reduced to doing things against his personal will – even more subservience to policies he genuinely hated and which, in my opinion he was eager to dump if only his election plan had succeeded. Of course if he had won comfortably, he could have claimed (with some credibility) that he owed the time-honoured Liberal Party polices “nothing” and was free to go on his own from then on. The horror was that the opposite had happened. He couldn’t even claim that the old policies were rejected, simply because they hadn’t even been a part of the campaign!

Incidentally, a good insight into the personality of Turnbull was when the extent of the defeat was known he could hardly be persuaded to appear before his supporters as was traditional and, when he did so, he only expressed anger, claimed illegal activity and expressed no regret for the loss of so many MPs who had been relying on him.

Once in government again he was constrained by the low majority and reliance on keeping every single MP onside and thus could not branch out with policies of his own. He was extremely frustrated by Tony Abbott, though, because as an ex-Prime Minister on the back bench, Tony Abbott was not the type of person who would allow the regular anonymous smears (obviously sourced from a small group of factional allies of Turnbull which everyone in Australia seemed to know) to go unanswered. He would call out where they came from too. He also went public in speeches laying out policy achievements of “his” government and differing views on policy directions which the Turnbull groupers would often denounce through their media mouthpieces. The polls remained universally bad for Turnbull and the rumblings about ousting Abbott remained just that. They probably knew that a second million votes would go and join the first one which Turnbull had already lost.

Reliant on a fractured party, he was a fish out of water. To hear him raising “clean coal” or criticising excessive wind power or to hear him say “Islamism” or other change of view pass his lips would lead to a Private Eye moment of pass the sick bag. This from the man who made his progressive political reputation on always sabotaging his party on behalf of climate alarmism and took a whole day before he would brand it as “terrorism” when a local Islamist terrorist assassinated CHEN outside police HQ in Parramatta in broad daylight

Of course he crashed and burned and then had to stagger on with fraud after fraud as to what his beliefs were until, at the end, he saw doom approaching and pushed just that close to locking that party in to take its policy suicide pill, that some realists ensured that his career came to its inevitable end.

By Turnbull trashing all his colleagues by resigning and Turnbull creatures in the party and media helping him try and sabotage the new government, we can see that the Turnbull persona is still going strong as we always knew that it would.

It’s future as a party far from secure, the Liberal Party itself is in danger of collapse, with two forces pulling it in directly opposite directions. However, with the insertion of a Malcolm Turnbull into that fading and rotting structure the existential crisis of the Liberal Party went into top gear. Turnbull could have been the catalyst for its creative destruction. Time will tell.

Last Saturday the 28 July five by-elections for vacant parliamentary seats (some very marginal) were held and from opposite ends of the country. The ruling Liberal Party was thrashed in that in two of its former seats where polls and circumstance seemed to favour it were both lost decisively. The overall vote was pathetic and a mere continuation of the declining trends shown in the earlier summary on this voting preference issue. As former ALP leader – and absolute Outsider for all the major parties – Mark Lathan summed up, the voting results for the major parties was completely toxic going on Australian standards.

That was the major conclusion to be drawn from the results. The political, Insider and media class can cling onto their power, but a move is taking place which might mirror some of the characteristics of overseas trends seen in the USA, Brexit Britain and Europe.

Now that some time has passed to allow for the political class to attack each other and, with their media friends analyse-to-death the result, it should be noted that in the two of the seats mentioned above (Longman in Queensland and Braddon in Tasmania) the two major parties spent a lot of time and money campaigning and they were also ones where polls and media commentary indicated that the Liberal Party government could capture the both of them.

In Braddon in Tasmania the former member was standing again for the Liberal Party and when he lost it narrowly in July 2016, Getup, the political action group for Greens and the Labor party founded by former operatives for the America left group Move-On. org, had spent a lot of time and money specifically targeting Braddon and some other seats in that State. Without that extra effort this time, perhaps it levelled the playing field a bit. In Longman in Queensland, a long-time Liberal party seat, very narrowly lost in 2016 when it had a member who seemed to spend much time out of the area.
Peculiar characteristics of this multiple seat campaign were notable. The major 3rd party candidate for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party had a late setback when Pauline Hanson herself, the major drawcard, absented herself in the last week and went on a pre-paid/pre-arranged cruise in the Irish Sea. On top of that (& the usual political media attack on her and her party over it), the media also well-publicised the fact that a former official was convicted of a rape from some time before. It was very well timed and so much stress was placed on those setbacks it could have affected the turnout for the One Nation party.

A stage was set where the series of opinion polls about leadership, policy and voting preference could be tested by actual votes (and from areas scattered all over the country).

The results were interesting to say the least. The Liberal party wasn’t even standing in some of the other seats (the two seats in Western Australian didn’t even have a Pauline Hanson party candidate) yet it resulted in comfortable ALP wins but the vote numbers showed over 30% did not vote (in a compulsory voting system) did not vote. The only signposted voting trend was a larger than normal shunning of major party candidates. In South Australia an independent went up against a Liberal party candidate and won by a landslide. There were a lot of ALP votes for her I suspect, seeing the ALP primary vote was below 10%.

The results for the Liberal National Party were stark. They were rejected by the public. The ALP leader Shorten was in Longman a lot, and there was a strong union effort on its behalf as usual, but it in no way could the ALP victory be attributed to their presence although it obviously helped. No, it’s quite clear that whatever that left effort was, with the usual Getup and union tactics of medi scare (again), the fact that Bill Shorten is the nationally most unpopular leader of an opposition on record didn’t hold the party back and it took the seat comfortably in the end.
The biggest factor in the loss, without any doubt, was the 15% vote gained by the much-attacked Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party candidate. The votes were taken from the LNP and half of their preferences went straight to the ALP, even though Pauline Hanson herself had often said to put the ALP last. After many months of constant media attacks on the Hanson party (including during the campaign) and universal hared of it expressed by every party hack from the ALP or Greens and including their stooges, the vote obtained in Queensland alone was startling. All parties know that if maintained, a constant representation of two Senators from Queensland is assured for the party. In Braddon it was the same story but without the One Nation excuse. Another independent candidate (who was attacked by the Liberal party) gained nearly 11% of the vote and his preferences went to Labor.

RESULTS INDICATE AGAIN THAT MALCOLM TURNBULL IS A POOR CAMPAIGNER.

The biggest takeout is that the 37 polls lost in a row by Malcolm Turnbull is no blip in figures to be changed when a “real election” comes about. This was it. It also shows the lie pushed by the supine political media when they slavishly boost Turnbull in every poll loss and rant about the “popularity for PM” difference between Turnbull and Shorten when these by-elections showed that these differences are meaningless if the policy is terrible. The media know this, of course, but you can see them do it time after time to cover for their favourite Turnbull and to help stop their deadly enemy, Tony Abbott, getting any encouragement by indicating the stark facts of a losing poll number.

Malcolm Turnbull is the dud candidate from hell. He has zero political instinct and when there is a lapse and he goes the wrong way, makes the wrong call it just reiterates his weakness. In the July 2016 election campaign, it was widely noted that he was a lazy campaigner (or non-campaigner) usually working at one event for a few hours in the morning and then calling a halt for the day. The problem was, again, his usual lack of cut-through on policy. In 2016 it was his nothing mantra of “jobs and growth” yet ignoring the industrial relations campaign his double dissolution was about, and ignoring completely the stopping the boats and carbon tax issues which were so damaging when Tony Abbott was campaigning in 2013.

This time the energy issue was also on the table but Turnbull couldn’t campaign on the factor of coal fired power because he was stuck on his terrible National Energy Guarantee policy which will mandate continuation of huge subsidies for renewables at the expense of coal power. Not only that but it allows (as Tony Abbott has pointed out) that the acceptance of the policy is dictated by the veto power of the state ALP governments.

During an enforced hiatus of this site so much has been happening in Australia and the world that it will take some time and multiple posts to present some analysis of it to anyone who wants to see another view rather than the mainstream media outlook from the self-appointed gatekeepers. As will be generally known and as I intend to point out in forthcoming posts, these gatekeepers can be totally off centre, not only about Australian attitudes but, woefully so, also about America, Brexit, and the EU.

There is a long and complex history of decline of our democracies, mainly due to the entrenchment of a political class that operates regardless of the will of the people expressed at elections. In fact, the arrogance of that class is such that it seems increasingly obvious that the presence of voters is a nuisance to them and that over decades they have grown determined to rule without the voters being too involved.

Detailed analysis of this new Ruling Class will be made in forthcoming posts, but reading of the superb 2010 work by Angelo Codevilla about it is a perfect place to start. There is a very necessary urgency to discuss what is happening in the US and Australia because our very future as a democratic country is at stake unless the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a few is not exposed, understood and challenged in a meaningful way.

There are commonalities in these changes to the political rule of many countries and these countries are all in a dangerous period of their history. Australia is not least at risk, with two often-lookalike major parties, a supine, monolithic political media producing a single-Narrative. More worrying is that there are current (and increasing) attempts to censor opposing views, even by utilising government powers to do so. Only a relative few columnists and social media voices provide alternatives to the prevailing narratives.

So far the internet has allowed independent voices and investigators to break free from the information straight jacket which organised legacy media and the political class have deemed necessary for us. However, as many now know and can see, the political forces behind the major media utilities, Google, Facebook, Youtube etc are under pressure from an uneasy political class to see the internet made to conform to the old legacy media model which they have controlled for decades. Recent moves to cramp the freedom on the internet, whether it be by straight censorship of social media voices, to denying publication to “non-permitted” narratives or having a media braying the same political message in unison risk recreating new versions of the rigid ”gatekeepers” they once were.

Never was the shallow response more obvious than with respect to all things Trump.

Nothing like this has been happening in the United States, not just in our lifetimes, but for over 100 years. Not seen since the first “Progressive” era (culminating in the Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson presidencies) turned US politics upside down, has its elitist core modern day twin become wedded to the progressive idea of superior classes. Seemingly anchored in the early 20th century version of “populism” the elitism of that day did not cause anything like the massive upheaval we see today. We have – thankfully – not seen the blatant “superior races” theme common in those days (The KKK factor in Democratic Party politics and American culture – the Birth of a Nation aka The Clansman era or the re-segregation of the US civil service).

Trump, as we all thought we knew him, is not the ideal person we could ever see taking over as a US president. Not just that he was a person from business who had a mixed-success personal and business life (and that’s a polite way of putting it), but also because he would be the only person ever to achieve the presidency without ever having held public office or to be a senior military officer.

What with Hillary Clinton being the other candidate, the “choice” seemed terrible to non-partisans. The rough diamond newcomer with a chequered personal and business life, making sometimes outlandish claims against both his Republican opponents and the Democratic Party opposition, making edgy statements about immigration which bordered on prejudicial in that they made sweeping claims about them as a class. The only saving grace was the idea amongst some that they were for effect during the campaign and that they would never be carried out in practice.

Then there was Hillary Clinton, a severely-polarising figure anyway but, with husband Bill, had been accused of every sort of financial wrong doing from their days in Arkansas and the Bill Clinton stint in the white house, campaign cash allegations etc. Hillary had become a polarising figure, a hero to many women and had the strength of the Clinton political machine and its control over the Democratic Party behind her, but a target of seemingly each and every Republican. With her stint at the State Department and allegations of conflict between her role there and Bill Clinton’s highly-paid speeches amongst the countries the US was dealing with, it was bound to lead to severe political attacks. The farce about the disaster at Benghazi where Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were killed and a video was blamed, caused severe polarisation but when it was also found that she had, for years, been using an unauthorised computer server while Secretary of State, all hell broke loose. Much more to be said on that 2015/6 electoral race.

Taking a snapshot of today, the mass Trump-based hysteria of the political classes in the United States, mirrored in Australia and Europe/UK, is a matter of huge seriousness, with Trump as the target of many who have the loudest voices. After wall-to-wall allegations of Russia collusion and an attack on the American democratic processes and institutions to “stop Trump” was first aired, the Russia Collusion narrative is now faltering. As news fades, the angst and fear of the perpetrators of the opposition to Trump becomes more loud, even shrill, as time goes by.

The depths of this conflict and the reasons for it will be explored in later posts. Suffice it to say that the closer it all comes to total exposure, it seems to some that the very future of the constitutional republic known as the USA is at risk.
Serious future topics will include the following:-

* American and Australian media and their interpretation of all things Trump.
* Does Trump have reason to doubt the 2016 Campaign integrity of his intelligence services or the FBI?
* Was the Alexander Downer involvement by chance or does it carry any implication of similarity to the now-suspected involvement of British security services? Was Downer the only Australian government official involved in the anti-Trump investigation and was the Australian government at all times unknowing of his involvement?
* The Clinton family and its Clinton Foundation’s connection to the Australian political class and the continual transfers of multiple $millions of Australian taxpayers money to sometimes questionable Clinton-linked campaigns.

For the existence of this blog in its role in studying and analyzing US Politics and media, we recognise that too much has changed in the past 30 years to ever consider relying exclusively on the legacy media as some form of reliable Gatekeeper of worthwhile political news and analysis. If anyone still thought that the “traditional” media comprised all the possible information sources deemed necessary to know what was happening in politics and the flow-on effects, think again.

If any proof of this was wanted in the study of US politics, just wait for a little while until the report of the US Department of Justice Inspector General’s Report into the Dept of Justice and FBI is published. Originally requested by Democrats, the various releases of information during the compilation of the report has been the material which has opened up the top echelon of the FBI to immense scrutiny. It has been the catalyst for the move or reassignment of most of the top people involved in the actions to investigate Hillary Clinton emails and also investigate candidate Trump. This included obtaining the FISA warrant and dealing with the opposition research company FusionGPS. It has culminated with the dismissal of the FBI No2 being based on discoveries of the IG investigation and the recommendation of the FBI’s own Office of Professional Responsibility. If the US media is still deserving of any shred of balance, then we will see voluminous and fair reporting based on the findings of this independent report.

Don’t hold your breath though. Unless I am mistaken, there will be a media response along the same lines which have been followed from the time Trump first got elected: publishing The Narrative and censoring out the opposite view, trashing informants and not following old-fashioned investigative journalism techniques of actual research, credibility of informants and corroboration of information.

Since at least the beginning of the Bush dynasty in 1988, through the advent of the Clinton political machine to the Obama era (and now Trump), any rose-colored glasses view of the media as honest brokers for political integrity in reporting should be treated with caution now.

Competition from the newer cable news channels, the internet and mass circulation syndicated political radio broadcasters, vastly extended the reach and broadened the variety of sources for political news. Conservative Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh went national with his talk show from New York in 1988. Cable news channel CNN had been in operation since 1980 as the only 24-hour news channel but it took the advent of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, created by Roger Ailes as a conservative 24-hour news channel in 1996 for the political media landscape to take a radically different turn.

By targeting a conservative audience demographic, it discovered what Charles Krauthammer once said was “a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people”.

From the political polarisation of the Bill and Hillary Clinton presidential era to the huge political fight-to- the-death over the 2000 election and the “hanging chads”, what was left of the old decorum in political discourse was dead. Every step of the way the political media came along and fully participated. Come 911, the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq a Rubicon seemed to have been crossed and the old media would never be the same again.

The Obama area started badly, with an email list of journalists getting together to try and control the Narrative during the 2008 campaign as it related to Barrack Obama (the JournOlist ), interfering with bad news and boosting Obama, diminishing Hillary Clinton etc. The Obama era did not exactly see anything like robust criticism of his mistakes. In fact the media were able to be treated with contempt, Obama aide Ben Rhodes made quite clear his views about the American political media.

Later, with the whole 2016 campaign and abuse of the institutions of state, where a candidate was spied upon in controversial circumstances, when a series of anti-terrorist measures were used to unmask and note the conversations of virtually a whole campaign team, only the claimed “Russia Collusion” itself could ever excuse it. If collusion died there was nothing left.

If not, a political scandal of even greater scale than Watergate was possibly uncovered. If so, it can be argued that unless the IG Report gains fair coverage, the traditional hope that in a crisis of US institutions, politicians and media would all come together to reset the institutions back on an even keel, will have been dashed.

Why new media?

Old-fashioned principles of caution, research, checking and credibility of sources used must be attached to anything seen purporting to “report” on these political actions and actors. With the increasing polarisation of the people and legacy media itself, the growth of the internet was the catalyst for new media, blogs etc offering alternate sources of information. Over the years they have had either missed it or had, but declined to recognise (or even to suppress it) as in Lewinsky, Dan Rather forgery etc. However, innate caution must be used as there are now so many social media investigative claims, some purporting to be “citizen journalists” that, luckily, we can see by the often-conflicting declarations of “fact” that this caution is never misplaced – ever. To see groups and sites getting many things right (and often main stream reports follow these revelations completely) but then going on to claim that Susan Rice is/isn’t cooperating with Trump, that Mueller is the “creature of the Deep State” or a “white hat” busily preparing to bury the anti-Trump “conspirators and so on.

Media of particular value.

Post the Trump election and the collapse of certain media into part of the #Resist movement, other media which have kept some balance have come to the fore. Outside of the usual lists of mass media which can be said to be firmly in one camp or another and about which their facts seem to include some points of view and ignore others completely, a phrase such as “liberal-leaning” or “conservative-leaning” shouldn’t exclude any such media from consideration. By using rational powers of observation, and looking for corroboration and verification of some seemingly extreme view of Trump or the FBI leadership means that we can build up a picture of the credibility of the reporters and even the channel itself.

This blog reads widely from sources and mentions some not-so-well-known media which deserve further views. Value has been found in using some quality investigative blogs and web sites, and two in particular have been prominent in investigating and breaking news of importance. In each of the Conservative Tree House and True Pundit web sites, when mainstream media outlets pick up on their research breakthroughs, their work has been given a boost for being of merit. As always, those “checks and balances” should be uppermost in minds before reliance on their work.

The Australian political and media class were panicking about the Trump steel and aluminium tariff announcement, so it seemed time that somebody else laid out some ideas about what Trump is doing, who he is doing it with and why. Ongoing trade tensions related to the differential levying of tariffs and other costs on American goods and services are all part of the world trade tensions Trump seeks to alter. Anti-dumping actions plus the transshipping of products and raw materials from country to country to avoid trade rules are in particular focus.

Donald Trump announced on 2 March, his long-foreshadowed plans to impose tariffs on certain named “unfair” competitors by declaring a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminium products.

Mexico and Canada are the two US partners of the US in the North American Free Trade Area, and associated with the Trump tariff push, NAFTA plays into the mix. NAFTA was long on the Trump radar for either radical reform or destruction and it is inextricably linked to the Trump plan to deal with the tariff issue. Only by taking account of NAFTA and the way Mexico and Canada can be bases for manufacture of goods which then enter the United States duty-free, can a proper understanding be had of the complementary nature of the tariff and NAFTA-Reform moves.

I could argue the points of Adam Creighton as they relate to what others have shown to be the implications from various tariff regimes, but suffice it for this post to limit my response to what was my purpose for thinking that such an article as this was necessary (and overdue).

While there was gnashing of Australian teeth at first, the Trump announcement was followed by political euphoria once Trump moved to the next stage of granting exemptions for special trade partners (which included Australia). Leaving aside the political backslapping by PM Turnbull and his team, some truths about what really matters to Trump and his team about the whole unfinished tariff and NAFTA issues are important in order to predict the future for these decisions.

It is a fact that whilever Trump is the sole concentration of all media and political response, the quality and input of his advisers seem to be overlooked. Many people were seemingly ignorant of the position held by Gary Cohn in the administration as the globalist, Jared and Ivanka friend, Pro-Paris Agreement, Goldman Sacks man in the administration. They seemed to think that he was a solid, “mainstay” of the teams rather than a part, often at odds with those who were totally different financial voices in the administration. Because most administration staff are incessantly the butt of rumours of being ousted or resigning from the administration, there was no excuse to see the Cohn departure as a huge moment.

This was also overlooked, at the time, by American media, where initial reports seemed to sow (or be meant to sow) discord by claiming that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross were against the tariff decision also. Not only was this not the case, but it showed how out of touch were the commentators playing this decision as some crude Trumpish way of bludgeoning through a disastrous policy which had not been thought through. This led to claims that panicked congressmen were to pass bills to override the Trump decision. Only Senator Jeff Flake, an avowed Trump, opponent has done so.

We shall see how it all plays out but it is a good idea that everyone who is not blinded by some anti-Trump malaise should spend some little time examining what the advisers (and Trump himself) have actually said about it, about what they are trying to do. Disagree or not, at least those who have done so would have fulfilled more of what the media usually claim they set out to do: see the argument for the other side.

EARLY in 2018 the Trump administration had announced tariffs on imported washing machines (20%) and solar panels (30%). It affected some NAFTA partners also and caused various mutterings about payback, trade wars and so on. However, the World Economic Forum was meeting at Davos in Switzerland that month and the American President Donald trump had decided to attend.

A convenient start to disabusing someone of thinking the steel and aluminum tariff rises was a rushed, necessarily ill-thought out decision, some in-depth analysis shown by the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at Davos is a good starting point. In a discussion with a number of others zeroing-in on US trade policy post washing machine/solar panels tariffs, the hour is dominated by Ross.

All of the Wilbur Ross contribution is very important to understand what Trump is doing. Ross is quite clear on a number of points and gets no disagreement from the group. Specifically, China is superb at free trade rhetoric and equally superb in protectionist behavior; China is directly targeted as a US objection to the practice of forcing foreign companies to manufacture locally, force a joint venture and the joint venture partner then forces technology transfer.

Real bite in the talk comes in the Q and A session when Ross lays it out that China is flooding the world with steel, using subsidies to export its oversupply unemployment problem to be an unemployment problem for other countries, particularly the USA.

Most importantly, the issue of countries using transshipping to move products to 3rd countries and then to enter the US or other trading nations via trade agreements with those 3rd countries is seen as a subterfuge to avoid trade rules. Blanket tariffs were a method to block rogue nations and companies moving manufacture around from country to country outpacing trade actions against them. It was to stop that that blanket tariffs were put onto washing machines and that is a template for other failures in the dumping rules.

ONE FINAL POINT when calling for some caution in analysing these moves, there is a persistent media and political drum beat that this is all a shock from both an “incompetent” Trump or his advisers. While we would hope that careful observers would listen and read to what people like Ross and Mnuchin actually say and believe, Donald Trump isn’t exactly an unknown quantity. A speech by Trump in Las Vegas in April, 2011 is worthwhile viewing.

It has a lot in it, including China, tariffs unfair competition, coal, the media and a prediction – in April 2011 – that Iran would dominate Iraq.

Australia is in political chaos and economic uncertainty right now. All self-inflicted. The seeds of economic deterioration are everywhere, aided and assisted by terrible political policy collapse While the economy could be seen as going well and the country as prosperous – on the surface – the political ruling class have laid the seeds of its future troubles.

A commodities-dependent nation and world price-taker which, with the agreement of the dominant political class, has willingly sabotaged its cheap energy riches, has not only adopted climate alarmism as the State policy by adopting the Paris Agreement but preceded it by taking multiple steps to sabotage all its energy advantages. With virtually limitless supplies of metallurgical and thermal coal (the nation’s biggest export) and with massive gas available plus almost 1/3 of the world reserves of uranium Australia has been let down by its political class in being seduced by climate alarmism. It has gone from one of the cheapest energy suppliers in the world to one of the most expensive.

That result is just one fact coming from years of economic and general policy blunders which had the effect of badly damaging the Australian economy or its budget/national debt. From profligate spending in the good times to huge, late (& extremely wasteful) deficit spending after the global financial crisis, to squandering money on the black hole which was the Clinton Foundation, a debt-free country in December 2007 was, by the change of government in September 2013, 300 $Billion in debt.

Major and Ongoing Political Changes

Politically, Australia is ruled in a rigid two-party system where the historical conservative/centre/left divide governing in turn for over 100 years has taken a sharp turn away from the historical groupings. The main parties are turning noticeably left.

A virtual two-party monopoly for over 80 years with the left Australian Labor Party and once-centrist/conservative Liberal Party formerly sharing over 85% of the(compulsory) vote between them, it now sees them struggling to reach 38% each in some cases. Greens and other minor/micro parties and localised “independent” causes take most of the rest. As said, having a Senate modeled on that of the USA, a proportional representation system has now built-in virtual permanent gridlock, with the small groupings holding the governing parties to ransom over pet (& often rent-seeking) causes. Not assisted by an historic electoral system which sees the weakest state, Tasmania, having the same Senate representation as New South Wales (which has a population 12 times the size). Smaller states always had disproportional leverage due to their different representations but the upper house gridlock has been caused by the public being willing to vote for minor or fringe candidates from outside the main two parties.

It all starts with energy and willful neglect of a built-in advantage

From 2007 when the Australian Labor Party (ALP) took office under leader Kevin Rudd (who claimed that the climate challenge was “the greatest moral challenge of our time”), both parties of that time went out to turn Australia – which never provided more than 1.5% of the worlds carbon emissions – away from its cheap energy life blood and sacrifice it to the then-“global warming” movement.

Australia got a reprieve in 2009 when conservatives in the then-opposition Liberal Party overthrew its leader Malcolm Turnbull and replaced him with a climate skeptic Tony Abbott. But while the planned surrender to the climate alarmists didn’t take place at that time (& Abbott and the party with him opposed any such carbon tax and other commodity-destroying policies) the ALP government of Australia under both Rudd and later Julia Gillard pushed for them as hard as they possibly could. On this, they were aided by their partners in ideology (and in actual coalition agreement) the Australian Greens and brought in a form of carbon tax which did its damage after the 2010 elections.

With a Greens/ALP political partnership giving climate alarmists the ability to govern in their own right, the $Billions of subsidy dollars started to flow to the renewable energy causes, massively subsidising the uneconomic (compared to coal) wind and solar. Bringing in renewable energy certificates to be granted to solar and wind etc and forcing coal-fired power providers to purchase them, policy artificially made efficient coal power to become uneconomic by virtually transferring billions directly from their shareholders to the favoured (comparatively inefficient) green energy/ solar/wind providers. Needless to say, this has made investors loathe to commit to funding them in view of the governmental sabotage. This lack of new investment has naturally been made much use of in the propaganda of the renewable energy sector.

Australia had some respite when Tony Abbott actually took government in September 2013 on policies to repeal carbon taxes and reverse many subsidies. A recalcitrant Senate stopped many moves for reform and only the actual carbon taxes themselves were finally stopped. Internal party opposition to Abbott, however, often based on belief in climate alarmism, never stopped working against him, including the man Abbott had beaten for the leadership in 2009, Malcolm Turnbull. Constant leaking, use of Wick r-type untraceable communication networks, the conspirators worked away for a long time through their creatures in the media (Canberra Press Gallery) and a never-ending stream of leaks, true and false, were constantly in the press.

While some poor political choices were made by the government led by Abbott (eg a foolish antipodean knighthood system, a proposed $20 billion medical research fund at a time when the country needed to save and pay off massive debts inherited from the Rudd/Gillard governments), they never had any clean air with all the undermining and sabotage from within, not to mention an almost unheard-of media mass-attack.

One additional, possibly a major factor in losing support from a section of his own State Liberal party machine, what Abbott did from the very first days in office, banning any lobbyists from access to the government if they held any official position in his own Liberal Party. This had been a key issue for a long time and while some had mentioned it before, particularly Liberal Party leaders, none had done anything about it until Abbott became PM. Perhaps it was coincidental that the major lobbyist player controlling the ruling faction in the NSW party of Abbott (& supporter of Malcolm Turnbull) happened to be a leading organiser for votes against Abbott when a coup ousted him as leader for Turnbull in September 2015.

Turnbull and Co announced for the Paris climate agreement in December 2015 and after retaining government in July 2016 by a single seat, announced for it again. Donald Trump had declared all through his campaign that he was against the Paris agreement and was for steel, for coal, fossil fuels, oil, gas and all forms of US energy production and use, the Australian government under Turnbull ratified the Paris agreement after Donald Trump had gained office as President of the United States!

It took a joint political effort to get the economy to this

It isn’t just the present, nominal centrist, trending leftist government sending the economy into an uncertain future. The opposition ALP party is worse, far worse in energy sabotage. Not content with the present government policy increasingly putting electricity prices out of the reach of the poor whilst enriching their renewable energy favourites, (all this while trying to reduce emissions by less than 30%), the ALP want to sink the energy marker altogether by going to 50 % in a few decades.

The ALP has other flaws, not least being an unhealthy connection by some if its senior officials and ex-political office holders with the government of China and the Chinese subsidiary organisations projecting so-called “soft power” active in Australia. More for another day.

To conclude for the moment, Australia could not be in much worse of a position, what with the world being so volatile at the moment. There is so much happening in the United States, where a massive investigation and assessment of its whole Obama-era use and relationships with once-world famous institutions, CIA, FBI the IRS and others.

What an appropriate time to resume this website publishing opinion and analysis. After an enforced absence due to personal reasons and some overseas family commitments, being in Australia in March 2018 sees the world in absolute turmoil. In fact the context of drift and uncertainty with foreign policy generally, US domestic policy, European cohesion (& lack of democracy), Britain and its Brexit challenge, plus the chaos/farce to which Australian politics has descended, demands as many voices as possible and not just the tired Old Media which has presided over this with hardly even calling out the changes.

Overview

AUSTRALIA is in political and economic chaos, a commodities-dependent nation which, with the agreement of the dominant political class, willingly sabotaged its cheap energy riches; the limitless supplies of coal (also close to or as the biggest export for years), gas and uranium. From a virtual two-party monopoly for over 80 years with the left and conservatives once sharing over 85% of the (compulsory) vote between them, now sees them struggling to reach 35% in either case. Greens and other minor/micro parties plus tempoirary “independent” causes taking the rest. With a Senate modelled on that of the USA, but with a proportional representation voting system, is in virtual permanent gridlock, with the small groupings holding governing parties to ransom over pet (& often rent-seeking) causes.

The UNITED STATES, one year post-Obama is still hung over on his administration; Obama loyalists and a huge proportion of the US media can’t cope with his replacement by Donald Trump.
At the end of the Obama era, the middle east was (and is) still dealing with the aftermath of Obama policies in the region. Those policies, which had resulted in major changes, including ominous side effects, ones of leaving Russia with much more power in the region, more than it ever had since expulsion from Egypt by President Sadat in 1974. Due to Obama weakness in policy across the whole middle east, including eager fostering of the unfortunately-named Arab Spring of early 1911, Iran was left the increasingly dominant regional power, to the alarm of erstwhile Arab friends of the west in the region. With Russia as its ally, Iran quickly filled the vacuum left when Obama pulled US forces from Iraq in 2011. By the US deserting Iraq in 2011 and through US weakness in Syria, Iran was an invaluable savior for both regimes and has aided Russia in dominating the two countries.
Other changes resulted from the Obama foreign policy in Europe, allowing Russia a much freer hand. As soon as he got into power Obama reversed Bush-era plans for defensive US missile shields in Poland and the Czech republic and later his failed Hillary Clinton “Reset” and the Obama “give me more flexibility after the election” to the Putin stand-in Medvedev in 2012 seemed to set the tone. There is a lot more detail showing the weakening of all American foreign policy in Europe and the middle east during the Obama term, culminating in the notorious Iran nuclear deal. There is so much to be covered on that, its side focus to avoid conflicts with Iran on other (drug) fronts, the fragile position of Israel during Obama’s term including much money being spent on siding with one party in opposition to PM Netanyahu.

Domestically, the Obama era was of historic low-growth, with recovery from the global financial crisis slower than in any recovery since the Great Depression. Obama started with a filibuster-proof Congress but in his first 2 years carried only Obamacare of note. From the time of the Tea Party rise on the basis of the Obama administration’s spending, controversy was obvious, culminating with his first mid-terms in 2010 where The Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives and, until his leaving power in early 2017 they never again had a majority there. In his post-2010 era of using a “phone and a pen” instead, Obama empowered his Environmental Protection Agency to emasculate the coal and coal-fired power industry, paid billions to subsidise green energy etc and the IRS cooperated with the FBI to target Tea Party-affiliated groups and ,many other conservative groups to deny them tax-free status, demanded to know their donor’s names etc. It is appropriate that many of these issues will be recalled as the history of the “Obama Era” is laid out over time
With Donald TRUMP, as we now seem to know from what has been discovered since his inauguration of Donald Trump, the FBI was hopelessly compromised at the highest levels before and after the election date of November 8 2016. Doubts about the actual roles of the leadership of both the CIA and the National Security Agency have been raised also.
Since the demise of Obama, Trump has been subject to domestic obstruction by Democrats at incredible levels and nothing has been seen in living memory of such a combined politician/media/ political class revolt against a president elected by the people of the United States.
An important part of this website going forward will concentrate on the United States and the Trump administration, the massive Democratic/media backlash and even the highly-unusual Republican “establishment”/Never Trumper attacks plus alliances with Democrats against Trump.

EUROPE is in trouble, the EU is broken at present, worried sick about Brexit and the possibility of Britain’s leaving being the catalyst for the breakup of an endangered Union. It had survived the self-inflicted crisis involving Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (the PIIGS nations), particularly Greece and Italy, by using all its undemocratic power to bear on Greece and Italy, forcing the Greeks to suffer and pay out all the money lent to it from German and French banks, money shoveled at them when Germany was getting rich on the back of exports to the cheap-money states (PIIGS).
The EU seems split between the de facto “rulers”, Germany & France and the rest of those who make up the EU itself. While most of the countries’ Europe bureaucrats seem to be rallying around the unelected European Council rulers in their efforts to bring Britain and others countries to heel, the fear of the people in many of the EU countries is palpable, plebiscites treated as hostile.
Now, by Angela Merkel having demonstrated the flaw in the supposed “union”, ie that Germany actually runs it and the others are mere vassal states to it, she invited a huge amount of supposed refugees from the middle east and Africa. When over a million arrived within a year, Germany exposed to the world her dominance of all other nations in the EU by attempting to force unwilling nations to take quotas of her invited “refugees”. Many of the states didn’t want to and four, the now-rebel Visegrád nations, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, resisted and are resisting the EU dictats on sharing German-directed immigration quotas. Far more needs to be said on that and Brexit but it can be dealt with later.

In all this, BRITAIN is split internally too. The Brexit vote to leave the EU was strongly carried in a voluntary vote at record levels in June 2016, with many working class areas strongly in favour, as were areas of Wales and elsewhere in England, but London, Scotland and Northern Ireland were against leaving. Not content with carrying out the voter’s wish, the vested interests in Britain have never stopped trying to overturn the original vote and denying the will of the people. The EU has also played its (usual) part, never accepting any such thing as an internal “people’s vote” on anything which the EU rulers deem necessary for their own good. Far more is yet to be done on this in Britain and between it and the EU, but it seems obvious from March, 2018 that direct opposition to Brexit against the will of the people is alive and well.

In summary, this is just a tip of the iceberg for all of us. The world is so interconnected that nothing happening any of these areas of conflict and human affairs can be isolated in it’s effects from anywhere else. I have yet to even hint at China and the rest of Asia. Being from Australia and China bearing such a large influence with and over Australia, that can wait until other web pages are published.

The ex- Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott gets plenty of attention in sections of the Australian media, most of it critical, as it has been for decades now. The personal nature of a lot of it and even unprofessional abuse (“oaf” just one of many pointed attacks on Mr Abbott by a particular senior journalist), and another showed such bias that she has written up to 60 articles highly critical of him since January 2015. On my estimation, she never once disclosed that her husband was a close insider/employee with his successor Malcolm Turnbull but that is par for the course these days.

The saga of the Australian Canberra press gallery pack with respect to the years of attacks on Tony Abbott deserves a number of articles but for now, these comments on his recent triumphneed to be made.

The NSW branch of the Liberal Party of Australia has been undemocratic for many years. Various factions of all kinds strictly prevented mere members from having much of a direct say in voting for pre-selections to parliament as Senators or virtually any other position. For years there have been embarrassing examples of branch stacking, physical confrontations and police being called to their meetings.

A number of people had tried to reform this party state branch and all had failed. Even people with the prestige of Australia’s second longest serving prime Minister, John Howard, couldn’t fight this inequity. Howard was against the closed system and wanted it reformed but, for whatever reason, never pushed it to the limit. I suppose a stonewalling “no” stopped him, as this also happens in the Australian Labor Party also (eg when Simon Crean wanted to change the union representation in the ALP).

A NSW premier, Barry O’Farrell didn’t do it either and while people of all positions of power in NSW Liberals stated – sometimes very publicly, but in official reports also – that they wanted democratic change and plebiscites or some other method to allow members a vote, nothing was done.

Until Tony Abbott, that is.

There had been years of comments about lobbyists being involved as senior members of the party (and thus with influence over pre-selections); there were corruption allegations proved against Liberal members on the Central Coast and the rigid factional system resulted in poor candidates, they to be easily beaten at elections. Tony Abbott fought these from the time he became leader in 2009 and took the party from a hopeless position with Malcolm Turnbull as leader to within a hair’s breadth of victory in the 2010 election. His landslide victory was attained n September 2013

In that election of 2010, an actual election year, the incompetent NSW branch did not even have a candidate selected for a very marginal seat, that of Lindsay in western Sydney and then selected a factional non-entity for another seat, also in western Sydney.

With no action on reform and not much practical assistance to Abbott in his early years as opposition leader, he acted immediately.when he finally became Prime Minister of Australia in September 2013,

It took only a single week after his election in 2013 for him to ban lobbyists from being party officials.He banned anyone who was a senior office holder in the party from being recognised as a lobbyist with his government and the NSW Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell quickly copied him in the State, something O’Farrell had not done since his own election 2 and a half years earlier. As the faction bosses then opted for their lobbying business rather than party position, they showed their priorities.

Tony Abbott never stopped advocating for these changes to the processes of the party. By November 2013, a mere two months after his election, he had commissioned former PM John Howard to lead a group towards producing suggestions on it and the 2 year membership plebiscite was what Howard produced in 2014, the very model Abbott presented through his Warringah motion on 23 July 2017. In the Howard Report, spurious claims such as the fear of “branch stacking” were rejected out of hand by Howard himself and the 2-year waiting period was said to be enough to eliminate that as a risk.

With all the smears thrown at Abbott in the past few months – everything was to topple Turnbull as PM, the motion was just him and an effort to disrupt the people on other factions, conveniently forgetting – on purpose – his fights with all factions to get candidates into winnable seats whether they be “his” faction or not. In the seat of Robertson the case of Lucy Wicks – a Hawke/Morrison creature – seems to be a fine case in point as was him arguing against endorsing a supposed conservative candidate in Greenway Jaymes Diaz. Abbott was very fortunate to have with him – actually beside him – Major General Jim Molan, MP Craig Kelly and MP Angus Taylor, amongst others. All three of them made their commitment to the democratisation of the party even though their own future careers were therefore put at risk of revenge from the factional bosses. Angus Taylor, in particular, is at great risk from them, precisely when he is the long-term future of the Liberal Party in parliament and Craig Kelly is the solid rock that the party needs. Jim Molan is a massive gain for the party and it would be a real loss for Australia if any of these three were to be lost to parliament. That is what they put on the line. Everything.

That’s what it takes to change, to inspire.

With the usual anti-Abbott media going all out on anything to do with only Abbott (and nearly all of it critical), the meeting to democratise the Liberal Party came to be on and over 1,000 people were there and, in an overwhelming vote, 60/40 backed the Abbott proposal. To see the crowd giving Tony Abbott and Jim Molan an old fashioned three cheers, meant a lot but signified a huge amount.

Tony Abbott showed what he has to offer and not only was it the achievement unattainable by others, he brought magnificent people with him as his partners for change and the party members were inspired by his example as the response to him indicates.

While the factions are still in their holes at present, they will creep out again. They have too much to lose in so many ways. It is to stop this being in the worst possible way that they must still fight, What is on their side (and this seems to be recognised by the media too) is that opposition to the progress of the Abbott motion will probably destroy the party.